OLYMPIA, Wash. – During a parole hearing Monday for a convicted killer, it was revealed he may be responsible for attacks on even more women than originally thought.

Warren Forrest told his therapist he attacked 13 women. He’s in prison for one murder. He was convicted of killing 19-year-old Krista Blake in the woods of Tukes Mountain just east of Battle Ground and has been locked up since the 1970s.

Clark County detectives think he’s responsible for the kidnapping or murders of seven women, including the disappearance of 16-year-old Jamie Grissim. Her body has never been found.

Forrest didn’t reveal any more details to his therapist. Coming clean is a requirement of his treatment, but if he reveals all of his crimes, then he can be prosecuted for them.

Meanwhile, family members of victims and one woman, Norma Countryman, who escaped being kidnapped by Forrest, pleaded with the parole board Monday to keep him locked up.

“I want him to admit to the others. I want him to give peace to the others,” Countryman told the board.

Countryman implored the parole board to keep Forrest locked up to save other girls.

“I put my mother through hell,” Countryman said. “She didn’t know how to deal with a broken daughter. She was broken herself.”

Countryman picked Forrest out of a lineup, which connected him to Blake’s murder, the only murder that’s put him in prison.

Forrest tortured Blake. Several years ago, Forrest described the murder to the parole board.

“During the struggle, I choked her to death,” he said. “I dug a shallow grave and tied the body up and put it in the hole and buried her.”

For years the Clark County Sheriff’s Office has thought Forrest was responsible for attacks on seven women, though he may have seemed like an unlikely killer.

He was the captain of his high school track team. He served in Vietnam and was married with two kids. But detectives believe his first victim was Jamie Grissim.

In December of 1971, Grissim left the foster home she and her younger sister live at for Fort Vancouver High School and never came back. Months later Grissim’s student ID and other belongings were found along a remote Clark County road near the bodies of two other women.Grissim’s younger sister, Starr Lara, hopes Forrest will reveal Grissim’s grave in his effort to show the parole board he’s no longer dangerous.

“It’s something you never get over, the not knowing,” Lara told the board. “I want to be able to bury her before I’m gone.”

She suspects him in her sister’s 1971 disappearance

A parole board is again considering whether a convicted killer suspected of slaying several Clark County women in the 1970s will remain in prison.

Warren L. Forrest, convicted killer

Warren L. Forrest, 64, of Battle Ground is eligible for parole on March 16. The Washington Indeterminate Sentence Review Board has until that date to decide whether he will be paroled.

As part of that process, the board’s four members on Monday heard from Forrest’s only surviving victim and family members of other girls he’s suspected of killing. All are opposed to Forrest’s release or a less-restrictive placement.

“There is no way a guy like that deserves to even think about leaving prison,” said Starr Lara, sister of one of the victims Forrest is suspected of killing. She spoke before the parole board on Monday.

Her sister, Jamie Grissim, was a 16-year-old student at Fort Vancouver High School when she disappeared Dec. 7 1971. She has never been found and hers remains the oldest missing person’s case in Clark County, according to the sheriff’s office.

Two parole board members are scheduled to meet with Forrest on Nov. 5 and then make a recommendation on whether he should remain in prison, said Robin Riley, assistant to the board chair. The board will decide no sooner than four weeks after his hearing, and the decision could take longer than that, Riley said.

The board denied him parole in April 2011 because of the brutality of the crimes and because he hadn’t met the standard of rehabilitation.

Nine people met with the board Monday at its headquarters in Lacey, Riley said.

“It’s very difficult, and I find the second time, I’m more and more angry with him because he has the chance to tell the truth,” Lara said. “I could forgive him a lot of things. I know he has a lot of mental health issues. But he knows the truth, and he’s deliberately withholding the truth because he thinks he can get out, and that I can’t forgive him for.”

Lara still can’t talk about her sister without choking back tears. They were removed from their mother’s home and placed in foster care together when Grissim was 5 and Lara was 3, Lara said.

“I looked up to her (Grissim) like a mother and big sister, everything,” Lara said. “She was my protector. I was her admirer. She could do no wrong in my eyes. That must have been a big burden for her because she was so young.”

Among the group that met with the board Monday was Forrest’s only surviving victim, who is now 54 years old. It was the first time she had addressed the parole board, Lara said. The Columbian is not identifying her because she is a rape victim.

Forrest abducted her in July 1974 in Ridgefield when she was 15. He held her at knife point, assaulted her and drove her to the Tukes Mountain area. There, he hogtied her to a tree, just 100 feet away from the grave of Krista Blake, whom Forrest killed earlier that month. He then left her at the location, saying he would return later. She was able to chew through her bindings and escape.

He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the kidnapping and rape and spent three years at Western State Hospital near Tacoma.

Investigators have said they believe Forrest is behind the disappearance of at least six young women in Clark County between March 1972 and October 1974.

However, the parole board told family members that Forrest has reportedly confessed to his therapist that he had a total of 13 victims, only one of which survived the experience, Lara said.

He was convicted of only Blake’s homicide and received a life sentence in 1979. His conviction allowed for the possibility of parole.

All of the homicides and Grissim’s missing person’s case remain under investigation, according to the sheriff’s office.

Forrest is an Army veteran and a former Clark County parks employee. The graves of multiple victims were found in or near Clark County parks.

Here is the parole board information. Let’s give him NO HOPE EVER of getting out.

Someone has more information on at least one of these murders. Let us get him on another, so he can truly receive life without the possibility of parole ever!! Read this and you will see, he is convicted of one murder, leaving two teenage girls for dead. Count that, three he wanted dead. Not to mention my sister and the others that are dead.

BATTLE GROUND, Wash. (KOIN) — Between 1971 and 1974, Warren Forrest worked for the Clark County Parks Department. During that same period, at least six different women disappeared.

Many of their bodies were found in shallow graves.

Jamie Grissim was last seen Dec. 7, 1971 after she left Ft. Vancouver High School in Vancouver. (Courtesy photo, May 8, 2013)

Jamie Grissimwas 16 when she went missing after school on December 7, 1971. Her purse, ID and other possessions were found in the woods northeast of Vancouver, near the remains of two other people in 1972.

“She said, ‘I’m walking home and I’ll be home by 1:30 at the latest,’” her sister Starr Laratold KOIN 6 News. “So I got home and it’s 3:30 and she not home.”

Her body has never been found.

Then in 1974, two women’s bodies were discovered near Dole Valley, an area where Grissim’s ID was found — and where Warren Forrest frequented as a parks worker. One body was identified at Carol Valenzuelas. The other has never been ID’d.

“He lived out in this area,” Lara said. “It’s like three girls disappear from this area and then two from Tukes Mountain where one survived an attack.”

Then in 1974, two women’s bodies were discovered near Dole Valley, an area where Grissim’s ID was found — and where Warren Forrest frequented as a parks worker. One body was identified at Carol Valenzuelas. The other has never been ID’d.

“He lived out in this area,” Lara said. “It’s like three girls disappear from this area and then two from Tukes Mountain where one survived an attack.”

Authorities believe Jamie Grissim was the first of eight victims attacked by Forrest. Two managed to escape, but authorities were only able to connect him to one murder — the one with the most physical evidence.

He was sentenced to life in prison — before mandatory sentencing laws took effect.

Now, Warren Forrest is up for parole.

In September, victims will provide statements to the parole board. It’s unclear what direction the parole board will decide.

“It’s scary and I just don’t want to give him that chance. I really hope someone can come forward,” Lara told KOIN 6 News. “He knows the truth and he won’t tell me, and that’s the part I can’t forgive him for.”

On Monday, one of her co-workers told her about the Cleveland rescue in an attempt to cheer her up.

“The biggest thing with me is people approach me as though my sister is alive. I know she isn’t. It’s upsetting to me,” Lara told HuffPost Crime. “I’m happy [the rescue] gives people hope or they think that it gives me hope, but it’s really hard on me. I know in my heart what happened.”

Lara said she hasn’t given up finding her sister — but she expects to find her sister’s remains.

Grissim was 16 when she disappeared after school in Vancouver, Wash. Her purse, ID and possessions were found May, 1972 in the woods northeast of Vancouver, near where other homicide victims had been found.

Lia Howard — whose 14-year-old nephew, Dylan Redwine, went missing in Colorado on Nov. 12, 2012 — says the Cleveland case has rejuvenated her family in its quest to find her nephew.

“It shows that missing children can be found even years later,” she said Tuesday in a phone interview. “When you don’t know where somebody is you put his name out there, because you never know where that someone is.”

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children also released a statement of hope, noting that recoveries of missing children are growing:

NCMEC has seen a growing number of recoveries of long-term missing children. Every story we hear offers hope to the families who are still searching, that their own children will one day come home.

On May 7, the NCMEC is celebrating this important message of hope by honoring Jaycee Dugard and her family at the 2013 Hope Awards. They were reunited in 2009 after Jaycee was abducted 18 years before.

This story like those of Elizabeth Smart, recovered after 9 months; Shawn Hornbeck, recovered after 4 years; Carlina White, recovered after 23 years; and Steve Carter, recovered after 34 years is the reason why we never forget any missing child.

Jamie Grissim was 16 when she went missing after school on December 7, 1971. Her purse, ID and other possessions were found in the woods northeast of Vancouver, near the remains of two other people in 1972.

Jamie Grissim was last seen Dec. 7, 1971 after she left Ft. Vancouver High School in Vancouver. (Courtesy photo, May 8, 2013)

Like this:

CLARK COUNTY, Wash. – Starr Lara’s sister, Jamie Grissim, left Fort Vancouver High School and vanished with hardly a trace 40 years ago.

Starr will mark the tragic milestone Saturday with a candlelight vigil and says she’s trying to come to terms with more bad news she recently received in the murder investigation.

Jamie was Starr’s big sister. She left their foster mother’s house, went to Fort Vancouver High School and never came home. That was Dec. 7, 1971. Starr was told Jamie simply ran away.

“I just kept staring out the picture window,” Starr said during a recent interview.

Jamie was 16.

Six months after she disappeared, Jamie’s identification was found by a neighbor picking up trash on Dole Valley Road in a very remote part of northeast Clark County. Then two years later, another neighbor walking up a nearby logging road discovered the remains of two women. One was identified as Carol Valenzuela. The other woman has never been identified.

Clark County detectives have long thought suspected serial killer Warren Forrest is responsible for the deaths of those two women. A sheriff’s office document says they also suspect that “Jamie Grissim is the first victim” of Warren Forrest, but they’ve never been able to match Jamie to the unidentified remains.

Starr was excited to learn a detective was trying again to match DNA to Jamie on hair found where the bodies were dumped.

When Starr recently got the news the crime lab couldn’t get usable DNA to make a comparison, she urged the detective to re-examine the skeleton itself. Starr says she was told Jamie’s dental records – that were compared years ago to the remains and used to rule Jamie out as a match – were incomplete. Starr hoped new technology would reveal more clues.

“He finally called back and tells me, ‘Starr, there are no remains.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘They lost them.’ And that was a huge shock to me. And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘You got to understand things were different back then.'”

“He finally called back and tells me, ‘Starr, there are no remains.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘They lost them.’ And that was a huge shock to me. And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘You got to understand things were different back then.'”

The Clark County Sheriff’s Office wonders if the remains were sent to the task force investigating the Green River Killer, were given to an anthropologist who used to teach at Clark College, or maybe they were lost when the medical examiner moved its offices.

“In my mind, that girl was connected to Jamie. I don’t know if it was her or not. I can’t prove it either way now,” Starr said.

Now she has to hope for a break in the case from an unexpected source.

The medical examiner’s office says its last record of the remains was in 1978. They were sent to a nationally renowned forensic anthropologist in Oklahoma. Staff there told KATU News it is checking records to see if they still have the remains.

The candlelight vigil for Jamie Grissim will be Saturday at Fort Vancouver High School. It begins at 4:30. The public is encouraged to attend.

Warren Forrest suspected of several Clark County slayings in 1970s

A state sentencing board on Tuesday continued its probe into whether a convicted killer from Vancouver suspected of slaying several women in the 1970s should be paroled.

A panel of two from the Washington Indeterminate Sentence Review Board interviewed Warren L. Forrest at Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen. The interview was the final step in the process to determine whether Forrest, now 61, has shown significant signs of rehabilitation.

The Columbian does not have details about Tuesday’s meeting, as it was not public.

The board is expected to make a decision in four to six weeks; if it decides in favor of Forrest, he could be paroled in 2014.

But that outcome looks doubtful, an observer predicted.

“After talking to (board members), I’m pretty sure he’s not going anywhere,” said Starr Lara, the sister of one of Forrest’s suspected victims. “They told me yesterday that they take very seriously what he’s done.”

Lara testified on Monday in Lacey before the parole board, decrying Forrest’s possible release. Her 16-year-old sister, Jamie Grissim, was believed to be one of Forrest’s first victims, according to 1970s police reports.

Forrest, an Army veteran and former Clark County parks employee, was the suspect behind the disappearances of six young women in Clark County between March 1972 and October 1974. He was convicted of one of the homicides and received a life sentence in 1979.

His conviction, however, left open the possibility of parole. This is the first time he’s being considered for parole.

Robin Riley, assistant to the Washington Indeterminate Sentence Review Board, said an outright release is not likely and that the board would first consider a less restrictive prison or work release program. And if he was paroled in 2014, he would first have to enter a prison program that teaches inmates how to reintegrate into society, she said.

VANCOUVER, Wash. — Nearly 40 years ago, Jamie Grissim disappeared without a trace. Detectives suspected she was murdered, but they never found her body.

The evidence points to one man: Warren Forrest.

Investigators believe Forrest killed Grissim and other teenage girls; however, prosecutors could only make one case stick. In the 1970s, Forrest was convicted of murdering 19-year-old Krista Blake in the woods of Tukes Mountain just east of Battle Ground.

Now Forrest is up for parole. He faced the the parole board in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday.

It was a day that Grissim’s little sister, Starr Lara, didn’t think she’d have to deal with for three more years. Forrest isn’t eligible for parole until 2014, but the board will now make a decision the next few weeks.

Lara said she was stunned to learn of the board’s early actions.

“I think of my sister every day, especially when I get up and when I go to bed,” she told the parole board.

Lara was 14 years old, when her then 16-year-old sister went missing on Dec. 7, 1971.

“When I got home, I noticed she wasn’t home and I said, ‘Where’s Jamie?”‘ Lara told the four-member parole board.

Jamie Grissim

When Lara last saw her sister, Grissim was leaving their foster home for Fort Vancouver High School. Grissim attended classes at the school, but never came home. At the time, Lara was told that her sister had simply run away.

Five months later, Grissim’s student ID and other belongings were found near Sunset Falls Campground in remote Clark County. The bodies of two other women were later found nearby.

Three years passed before Forrest was arrested for kidnapping, raping, stabbing and leaving for dead a 20-year-old woman at Lacamas Lake Park near Camas. Forrest was working for the Clark County Parks Department at the time.

A Vietnam veteran, Forrest was married and the father of two young children. He pleaded guilty by way of insanity and was sent to the state mental hospital for five years.

The same year as the Lacamas Lake kidnapping, Forrest lured a 15-year-old Ridgefield girl into his blue van and drove her to the same stand of trees that he took Krista Blake to near Battle Ground.

According to a report by the Columbian newspaper at the time, the girl testified Forrest “tied her head to one tree and her legs to another. Later, she chewed through the twine and struggled out of a loop holding her legs. With hands and ankles still tied, she hopped away.”

It all took place just 169 feet away from the spot where hikers found Blake’s body. She had been hogtied and killed.

Near the end of his treatment at the mental hospital, Forrest was convicted for Blake’s murder and sent to prison in 1979.

“He tortured her, shot her with a dart gun and cut her throat. And then he buried her in a very shallow grave,” said Blake’s sister, Zela, who did not want to be identified by her full name.

Zela and Blake’s other sister, Valerie, both lobbied the parole board to keep Forrest behind bars.

“Warren Forrest is a monster and no amount of time in prison will change that,” said Valerie, who also did not want to be identified by her full name.

A Clark County Sheriff’s Office document from 1978 formally links Forrest to Grissim’s disappearance, as well as murders or attacks of six other women. “It’s suspected that Jamie Grissim is the first victim of Warren Leslie Forrest, who is suspected of killing eight women Clark County,” a detective wrote in a 2006 email.

“The story of Warren Forrest is a horrible story,” said Denny Hunter, a retired Clark County deputy prosecutor, to the parole board. It was Hunter who put Forrest in prison.

“What he did to them was probably the most cruel behavior I’ve probably ever experienced,” he said.

Lara still hopes there is some humanity left inside of Forrest. Now that he’s 61 years old and up for parole, she hopes he’ll reveal the location of her sister’s body, though doing so could open him up to being prosecuted for Grissim’s murder.

“What happened to her? The not-knowing is the hardest part,” she said. “Where is she? And he knows. I know he knows.”

Family members didn’t get to face Forrest during the parole hearing. However, he will receive a copy of their statements.

The parole board will take four to six weeks to make its decision. If he is granted parole, Forrest will spend the next three years before his release learning how to live on the outside. He will be taught life skills, like how to use a cell phone.

“This is a very, very serious history to overcome,” said parole board member Dennis Thaut.

Meantime, Clark County detectives are still hoping for a tip that will lead them to Grissim’s body.